Ancient tablets list rights enjoyed by women

• published: 02 Aug 2015
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Excavations continuing since 1948 have unearthed 23,500 clay tablets, the oldest written testimonies of Anatolian history, which mention the recognition and protection of women's rights The Republic of Turkey is established on a naturally and historically prosperous landscape. These lands are home to the first alphabet, cuneiform, the first settlement, Çatalhöyük and the oldest temple, Göbeklitepe. However, these historical treasures are not the only ones. The excavations, continuing since 1948, at the Kültepe-Kanesh-Karum trade colony, located near Kayseri in central Anatolia, have revealed the oldest and the largest archive of private texts in the ancient Near East. The Kültepe tumulus sits in the middle of the Sarımsaklı Plain, near the foothills of Erciyes Mountain, the highest mountain in the Central Anatolia region. The site has two sections and is 20 meters high and has a diameter of 550 meters. The borders of the lower town surrounding the tumulus have not been positively identified, but they are at least a 2.5 kilometers in diameter. Karum, the mound and the castle located in the middle of the mound were surrounded by thick walls. The houses were mostly two-storied, built in the Anatolian style and close to each other. Research has shown that both areas of the colony were destroyed due to a fire. The unopened envelopes unearthed during the excavations indicate that the fire was sudden. The excavations at the Kültepe-Kanesh-Karum historical site began in 1948 under the administration of Prof. Dr. Tahsin Özgüç. Following his death in 2005, Prof. Dr. Fikri Kulakoğlu has continued his work on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Ankara University. To date, 23,500 clay tablets and envelopes have been found marking the start of written history in Anatolia. These tablets, written in an old Assyrian dialect with the cuneiform scripture, include detailed information about daily life in the trade colony, such as family affairs, personal relationships, economy and society in general. However, the most interesting topic seems to be "women rights," which is a rare topic to come across in Bronze Age writings. The ancient city was one of the most enlightened cities of its time, since findings have revealed that a large portion of the population was literate. This was mainly due to the trade relations and policies of the ancient city. The progress of trade is explained in UNESCO's web page with the following words: "King Erishum I launched a series of trade reforms in order to secure the future of his kingdom. He lifted the state monopoly on trade, thereby allowing long-distance commerce to be carried out by private individuals operating within 'family firms.' This in turn led to the creation of a highly complex and wide-reaching trade network between north Mesopotamia and Anatolia during the first quarter of the second millennium B.C. The private archives kept in the Assyrian houses make up the first private libraries of political, commercial and legal documents of ancient Anatolia, affording a uniquely rich source of information for ancient Near Eastern scholarship as a whole." Furthermore, UNESCO states that the population living there was a "cohabitation of local Anatolian and foreign Mesopotamian and Syrian merchants," which "is not seen at any other ancient Near Eastern settlement." As trade was the center of life in Kanesh, the merchants recorded every single issue, event, problem and progress concerning money. The excavation director Kulakoğlu told Daily Sabah that the records of the merchants are as detailed and varied as a modern company's financial records. The records include every detail about financial issues ranging from the cost of feeding the animals used for transportation to huge sales to foreign buyers.